Yesterday Marc Schweigert (Microsoft Developer Evangelist) did a webcast presentation titled "Adding Mapping Capabilities to your Applications with Virtual Earth and ASP.NET AJAX". Near the end of the presentation, he mentioned the PietschSoft.VE project and gave the link to it on CodePlex and the Live Demo site. This mention is located in slide 32 of the Powerpoint deck from the presentation.
You'll be able to view the webcast online, after the fact.
The presentatio... [More]

Here's a bookmarklet for submitting a link to DotNetKicks that automatically passes in the URL, Title and Description. To specify the description to submit all you have to do is highlight text on the page.
Try it:DotNetKicks (Auto Bookmarklet)
To add this bookmarklet to your favorites, just drag it to the favorites or right-click and select "Add to Favorites".
What is a bookmarklet?A bookmarklet is a small JavaScript program that can be stored as a URL within a bookmark in most popu... [More]

A couple weeks ago, I was listening to DotNetRocks! episode #218 with Dare Obasanjo when they were taling about Windows Live Services. They happened to touch on MS Virtual Earth, so I decided to email them and let them know about my PietschSoft.VE control over at CodePlex.
Well, I just listened to episode #221 (I know I'm a week behind), and they mentioned my PietschSoft.VE control on the show! And, they even pronounced my name right. This is way cool!
DotNetRocks! e... [More]

ASP.NET Web Matrix was the Free ASP.NET editor back in the .NET 1.x days. The tool is actually still available for download. The other day, I was thinking...
Why doesn't Microsoft make ASP.NET Web Matrix available as Shared Source?
Web Matrix was a really cool tool, and it's obviously been rendered obsolete by Visual Studio Express. However, there are still alot of really cool things done in the code, and I think it would be beneficial to the community if the source code were made available.
... [More]

Today is the first day of Spring, and in the Milwaukee area we are lucky enough to have some rain and a thunderstorm today. I like thunderstorms so I'm glad the season is here. The only bad part is it's also the beginning of Tornado season.
Update 4/15/2007: And, it also snowed about an inch a couple days ago. But, it seems to be getting warmer again... But, we'll see if it stays warm. You gotta love Wisconsin weather.

The turn out for each of the Wisconsin .NET Users Group meetings is really great. So great, there are regularly 100+ attendees. The reason for such great attendance can be attributed to two things:
The presenters (mostly local talent) consistently perform really awesome, informative and educational presentations.
There is a pretty large .NET community in the Milwaukee area
I've been a member of the group since 2003 and attend the meetings very regularly. I've also&... [More]

I've seen/used objects within the .NET Framework that have default indexer properties (ie: SqlDataReader, System.Collections.Generic.List). Now how exactly do I give my own custom object type a default indexer property?
Well, it's actually rather simple. Heres an example of a Club object with a People collection of type Person that has a default indexer property set up:
public class Club{ /// <summary> /// Collection of Person objects in the Club /// <... [More]

I just posted v2.0.1 of my PietschSoft.VE mapping control on CodePlex. It's been just over a week since I released v2.0.0. This new release adds support for Get Route and Polyline functionality. My initial goal to release v2.0.1 was 3/19, but as it turns out I finished the main functionality for it early. This fits right inline with my goal to put out small releases often.
PietschSoft.VE - ASP.NET AJAX Virtual Earth Mapping Server Control
Enjoy!

Over a year ago I posted a question about doing a SQL-like IN operation in .NET. Here's the examples I posted of how it could work:
Dim arrNames() AS String = New Array{"CHRIS", "TOM", "TYLER"}
If strName IN arrNames Then
'do something
End If
Now, this would be a powerful feature since you wouldn't be required to write code that loops through the array or collection. Well, I saw some good news today posted by Scott Guthrie.
... [More]

There are alot of podcasts being produced out there. I've had trouble over the last couple years in finding good quality podcasts to listen to.
Here's a collection of the podcasts I listen to regularly:
Windows Weekly - A weekly look at all things Microsoft including Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Xbox from the foremost Windows expert in the world, Paul Thurrott of the Super Site for Windows
Security Now - Steve Gibson, the man who coined the term spyware and created the first anti-spyware p... [More]

Finally, v2.0.0 Alpha is out!
PietschSoft.VE is an ASP.NET AJAX Virtual Earth Mapping server control. The main purpose of the project is to provide ASP.NET 2.0 developers with an easy to use Virtual Earth mapping server control. This control abstracts away the requirement of JavaScript knowledge when utilizing MS Virtual Earth mapping within your ASP.NET 2.0 web applications.
It's been way too long since I've put out a release of my PietschSoft.VE ASP.NET Virtual Eart... [More]

Here's a basic JavaScript/AJAX example that demonstrates the process of asynchronously requesting the contents of a file and displaying it within a textarea.
Download Code Here
I've done alot of JavaScript/AJAX programming from scratch (without using any AJAX frameworks) over the last couple years, so I thought I would share some of what I've learned. This is the first of a series of examples that I'll post if there is an interest. So, please let me know if you want me to post more.